Mark Mills - The Savage Garden

He paused for a moment, then edged through the crack.

Beyond the hedge, the path was graveled, with trees pressing in tightly, their interlocking branches forming a gloomy vault overhead. After a hundred yards or so, the trees fell away abruptly on both sides and he found himself in a clearing near the head of a broad cleft in the hillside. This was evidently the heart of the garden, the central axis along which it unfolded.

To his right, set near the top of a tiered and stone-trimmed amphitheater, stood a pedestal bearing a marble statue of a naked woman. Her exaggerated contrapposto stance thrust her right hip out, twisting her torso to the left, while her head was turned back to the right, peering over her shoulder. Her right arm was folded across her front, modestly covering her breasts; her hair was wreathed with blossoms; and at her feet flowers spilled from an overturned vase, like water from an urn.

Unless he was mistaken, Federico Docci had cast his wife in the image of Flora, goddess of flowers. This was not so surprising, but the conceit still brought a smile to his lips.

If there was any doubt as to the identity of the statue, on the crest above, a triumphal arch stood out proud against a screen of dark ilex trees. On the heavy lintel borne up by fluted columns, and set between two decorative lozenges, was incised the word:

The Italian for flower; Flora in Latin. There was something telling, tender, about Federico's decision to employ the Italian form of his wife's Christian name—an indication, perhaps, of a pet name or some other private intimacy lost to history.

Two steep stone runnels bordered the amphitheater, descending to a long trough sunk into the ground. Leaves and other debris had collected in the base of the trough, and a dead bird lay on this rotting mattress, pale bones showing through decaying plumage. A weather-fretted stone bench was set before the trough, facing the amphitheater. It bore an inscription in Latin, eroded by the elements, but just possible to make out:

anima fit sedendo et quiescendo prudentior

The Soul in Repose Grows Wiser. Or something like that. An appropriate message for a spot intended for contemplation.

The presence of an overflow outlet just below the rim of the trough steered his gaze down the slope to a high mound bristling with laurel and fringed with cypresses. From here two paths branched off into the dark woods flanking the overgrown pasture that ran to the foot of the valley, and at the far end of which some kind of stone building lurked in the trees.

A flight of shallow steps led down to the mound. Adam skirted the artificial hillock, wondering just what it represented. It didn't represent anything, he discovered; it existed to house a deep, stygian grotto.

The irregular entrance, designed to look like the mouth of some mountain cave, was encrusted with cut rock and stalactites. The angle of the sun was such that he couldn't make out what lay inside.

He hesitated for a moment, shook off a mild foreboding, then stepped into the yawning darkness.

Did you see him before he left?

Briefly. I told him you were resting.

I wanted to see him.

Wake me up next time.

Of course, Signora.

Did he say anything?

About what?

The garden, of course.

No.

Nothing? He was very silent.

Silent?

Distracted.

He's handsome, don't you think? Tall and dark and slightly dangerous.

He's too pallid.

It's not his fault, Maria, he's English.

And he's too thin.

A bit, I agree.

He needs fattening up.

That will come with time. He hasn't grown into his body yet.

I think he's strange.

Really?

When he left, I saw him walking back and forth between the cypresses at the top of the driveway. Big long steps.

Interesting.

Worrying. It must be the heat.

No, it means he's worked it out. Signora?

The cypresses taper toward the top of the driveway.

Taper?

The two rows narrow as you approach the villa—to increase the sense of perspective.

I didn't know.

That's because I don't tell anyone.

Why not?

To see if they notice. Only two people have ever noticed. Three now.

And the other two?

Both dead.

Let's hope for the Englishman's sake there's no connection.

You know, Maria, you really can be quite amusing when you want to be .

ADAM WAS AWAKENED BY A DULL BUT PERSISTENT PRESSURE in his right buttock. His fingers searched out the offending object but couldn't make sense of it. He opened his eyes and peered at an unopened bottle of mineral water. Overhead, the blades of the ceiling fan struggled to generate a downdraft. He was flat on his back on the bed, fully clothed still, and the wall lights were ablaze, unbearably bright.

He swung his legs off the bed and made unsteadily for the switch beside the door. The beat in his temples informed him that he'd drunk too much the night before. And then he remembered why.

He searched the tangle of memories for irredeemable behavior.

Nothing. No. He was in the clear.

He pushed open the shutters, allowing the soft dawn light to wash into the room.

Unscrewing the cap of the mineral water bottle, he downed half the tepid contents without drawing breath. He hadn't registered it before, but there was a tinted print on the wall above the bed—a garish depiction of Christ in some rocky landscape, two fingers raised in benediction. Presumably the artist had gone for a beatific expression, but the Son of God was glancing down with what appeared to be the weary look of someone who has seen it all before—as if nothing that unfolded on the mattress below could ever surprise him. He might even have been a judge scoring a lackluster performance: two-out-of-five for effort.

Harry, thought Adam. Why Harry? Why now? And why hadn't he, Adam, said no?

The only consolation was that when Signora Fanelli had come to his room just before dinner with the news that 'Arry was on the telephone, he had assumed the worst, that their mother or father had suffered some terrible fate. As it turned out, the news was only marginally less calamitous. Harry was coming to visit.

Reason had quickly stemmed the trickle of loneliness that welcomed the idea.

"Why, Harry?" Adam had demanded.

"Because you're my baby brother."

"You mean you couldn't make my farewell dinner in Purley, but Italy's not a problem?"

"I don't do farewell dinners in Purley, not when I'm in Sheffield."

"What were you doing in Sheffield?"

"None of your business. Anyway, what's the fuss—I phoned, didn't I?"

"No, as it happens."

"Well, I meant to."

Of course, Harry couldn't say when he'd be arriving or leaving—"For God's sake, Adam, what am I, a fucking train timetable?"—only that he had things to do in Italy and that he'd fit Adam in along the way.

Fortunately, this time he'd be on his own, unlike his last impromptu visit. Harry had shown up in Cambridge earlier in the year with a fellow sculptor from Corsham in tow, a garrulous Scotsman with child-bearing hips and a face like a bag of wrenches. Finn Duggan had taken an instant and very vocal dislike to the university and all associated with it. Leaping to his feet in the Baron of Beef on the first evening, he had challenged all the "snotty wee shites" present to drink him under the table. A mousey astrophysicist from Trinity Hall had duly obliged, plunging Finn Duggan into a deep and dangerous gloom for the remainder of the weekend. Violence had only narrowly been avoided following Harry's mischievous speculation that the loser's beers had been spiked with some chemical cooked up in one of the university labs.